From WBE Chicago. It's this American life. I'm Nancy up deck sitting in for Ira glass Okay, Val. What are we looking at so this video?
It's from the front lines of the war in Ukraine It's from a few weeks ago and it's in Bocamoot Which is a sitting the eastern part of the country and the video is shot by this guy's part of a team of volunteers who help people get out He's filming it on a camera. That's like inside his front coat pocket or something Yeah, I can tell it's it's kind of herky-jerky because he's he's running now. He's walking actually there are low buildings all around like three or four stories Yeah, and there are no people in sight. Hey, but what's your no cars?
It's totally empty I am gonna stop here for some quick background Valerie who's been talking me through the video is my colleague Valerie Kipness producer at the show She speaks Russian understand Ukrainian. She has been watching a lot of these videos which are a genre in this war In Bocamoot the fighting has been terrible for months The city may already have fallen by the time this airs tens of thousands of people left the city in earlier waves The deputy prime minister of Ukraine said the other week quote if you are rational law abiding and patriotic citizens You should leave the city immediately but at every front line in every war if it's a city There are people holding out in Bocamoot maybe several thousand many elderly or disabled people those caring for them also die hearts And so ordinary people like the guy who shot this video have taken it upon themselves to put on bullet-proof vests Somehow get into Bocamoot and get people out take them to a refugee center where they'll be safe All right back to this video that Valerie is showing me the volunteer the guy named Cuba is in Bocamoot looking for an older woman Who seems to be one of the last people left in this one apartment building? Okay, he's running up the stairs and you can see this building is like totally destroyed I mean you can barely see it, but it has a huge hole in it He's adding like evacuation evacueators So he's trying to shout like hey There she is he found her and he's saying like hey, I'm a volunteer. I'm here to pick you up I'm here to take you a piece and she's like I'm not ready.
I'm not ready. I'm not packing. He's like there's lots of bombs. We have to go It's clearly no heat.
She's in a coat and a hat and she's got a glasses She's like what do I take with me and he's like passports and pictures of loved one that's it. Let's go And she's saying like I need to pack grapes and and maybe some sort of like pancakes or chocolate and he's like there's gonna be everything there come And then the video jumps ahead and suddenly they're outside walking She goes I got less ready than I would have if there was a fire And she goes in my shoes are all broken they're all falling apart What am I gonna wear there? And he's like there'll be everything there That'll be everything How many of his videos have you watched oh man dozens over hundred? These evacuations are a whole thing that's happening.
There are loose networks of people who do it There's no one organization behind it But evacueators just go in like this guy Cuba Sometimes he gets into town and all he has is a name Maybe from a family member who contacted him like can you get out my grandma or my cousin? Maybe he has an address if the person is still there and if Cuba can't find it when he's running out of time He just jogs through the streets calling their name out The problem is people don't always want to go a lot of people he meets don't want to go They're not ready or they don't want to be rescued Some don't want to leave property or they don't want to abandon other family members who won't leave Some think the worst is over or will soon be over and that once one side or the other wins Everything will calm down and they'll just learn to live with the outcome whatever that is Valerie's been talking with this guy Cuba stachek who works in the East including Buck mood. He's a young man 28 He's Polish his group has people from all over including Ukrainians Gooba says when he's trying to persuade people to go sometimes maps help I show that rations are pushing from every single direction that they can and in a couple days There will be nothing and that on the next day there may be I mean there is a reason that tomorrow we want reach Their house because rations will cut off the last road Gooba told Valerie that when he started doing this almost a year ago He wanted to convince every person he talked to to leave That he's gotten very used to hearing now because back then I was like trying to convince anyone anytime and right now And there's a heavy shining and somebody's telling me to pardon my friend. I'm just like whatever of course Yeah, sure you can't help anybody Especially when we are just you know hostile towards you you can do nothing And it's nice to think to do to believe that you can because you can't you just can't save the whole world That's that's what I'm trying to say Even some yeses he's found her kind of a no that woman he evacuated he wanted to pack up grapes and pancakes Valerie says he took her to a refugee center in a city called Krematorsk It's about an hour away from her home and she was so upset go which only she wasn't happy about the live She asked me.
I mean why did I took her to such a wild place? She had this perspective that I don't know trick her or something So she was upset She was you know telling me that she wants to go back and I was like a serious dying series capouta She was like, okay, so I would die with the city and I was like, okay, and I don't have a conversation. What can I do? And they kind of lost touch for a little bit and it turns out that she ended up having her relatives send her back east to Russian occupied area where maybe it's not the front line, but it's due to be dangerous soon and Goob after he heard that he went back to her house just to like look at it And he saw how he evacuated her from that's right and he went to look at it And he saw that like specifically her apartment had been destroyed by another strike And I think he like felt sort of the sense of validation like you would have been killed if I had not taken you out But she was still sort of unhappy and ended up going back to an occupied region What does she mean a wild place?
I think she meant that it wasn't home. That's what I really think she meant But this show is not going to be about knows or yeses It's about people weighing when to go and one reason Cuba and others go back to the same city again and again Is it sometimes a person who's been a no no no no for months is suddenly a yes, please it is time Valerie managed to reach someone Cuba helped get out of Bach moved two months ago That man Roman had been living there with his parents who were in their 70s And he told Valerie what changed for him because he actually first met Cuba months ago And was like now we're good even though things were bad I almost got killed nine times in Bach moved I got caught in gunfire. I got caught in explosions In the center of the city while I was crossing the nickel. I was he bridge Even there I almost died and in at home.
I almost died. I mean it was really serious, you know, I'm telling you nine times You know, I was even talking to like Ukrainian military and I was telling them, you know I kind of got used to it already and they said that's a bad habit And then things got worse and worse and worse and all of a sudden like the telephone wires by our house were all dangling And then I saw that there was like gunfire on the the houses on the roads on the fences and then you know I just like went outside of my house and I just saw the bullets like ricocheting And I just thought you know, that's it. I don't think we'll make it and I started talking to my parents, you know I just don't think we'll make it And I told them we got to do something it's either we leave or we die They decided to go and there's a video of this evacuation to Roman and his parents Roman's father seems very frail in the video one of the evacuators is helping his father sort of shuffle backward over this metal beam That's a makeshift bridge over a river. The father is holding on and moving very slowly An explosion it was all black and it was just like, you know, the house over my neighbor's house that it fell the missile And then we got out of there I just said wow look how quiet it is like you can actually be here You could just sit here and relax and it was just like it was where we lived that they were attacking, you know And then when I got to come up, I started looking around and I saw Civilization and light electricity and the trolley buses working and I just felt this like sense of elation a smile crossed my face or something Actually the first time that they took these cookies out onto the table I just I felt so happy it had been so long since I had even seen them, you know Do you understand I hadn't seen like loaves of bread like sure I had coffee But still that was hard to come by you know and cookies and I had forgotten what that tasted like and I just felt so Amazing to have them finally But to be totally honest, I still yearn to go to my place to my home Today's show when to leave How do you know when it's right to make a decision that is so often full of doubt guilt Consequences for other people and even afterwards sometimes forever afterward regret and longing and second guesses We have two stories today with high stakes and complicated choices Stay with us act one first do no harm Let's start right in with a calm rational person assessing a new reality getting a feel for what it means and deciding what to do Meeky meek reports Emily a Hunsberger has a story she tells about what it's like to work at a small rural hospital She's an ob-gyn in northern Idaho in a place called Sam point and early on she got called down to the emergency room to examine a woman The woman had passed out she was hemorrhaging a lot of blood she was miscarring I took her to the operating room and I transfused a bunch of blood products and her labs were starting to be a bit abnormal And I asked for the lab to get me platelets the nurse supervisor who was on that night said oh well we don't have those and I said oh we don't we don't have any platelets.
Oh no we don't have those in the blood bank here Oh, so she told me that we could get them from Spokane and I was like great well Let's let's activate that right away and she said oh okay. Yeah, they come by taxi Right and I said really seriously like blood products are going to be put in a cab and they come to the hospital from Spokane Which is an hour and a half away and we're in the winter then she said yeah They'll come by cab Most doctors fresh off years of training at fancy urban hospitals might look at an experience like this and want to run from it But for Amelia, this was her plan her first choice She grew up in a place like Sam point beautiful rural surrounded by mountains. She did her first delivery in middle school It was a baby lamb she's to help her dad out during landing season and all through med school She was like why shouldn't people in rural places get the best care Amelia is someone who generally takes stuff on if it needs doing whenever there's some unpaid committee job No one wants Amelia signs up not an ego way. It's more like why wouldn't you do that?
Amelia's husband Vince he works at the same hospital He's an ER doctor and he also grew up in a small town They met in medical school and wanted to settle in a place like this because they knew rural hospitals desperately need doctors Yes practicing medicine here in standpoint means platelets arrive by taxi, but also Amelia said you really get to know your patients It's nice running into them all over town Half of the day is people that I know who I'm delighted like what are the updates when your granddaughter coming home when somebody comes up to me And wants in the grocery store and wants to ask a question about casual discharge That's not awesome, but when a patient comes up to me and wants to show me, you know her grandchild who I delivered That's really delightful. Amelia's whole life isn't sampling. She invents have raised all three of their kids here recently her parents moved here too But I've been talking to Amelia for months over the phone and in person not because she loves the place But because she thinks it might be time to leave Amelia did not see herself as an abortion care provider. She's a general OBGYN So she sees everyone from teenagers to 90 year olds.
She does pap smears prenatal care, rust exams, STIs, prescribes birth control delivers babies. She's got the bulletin board to prove it and right now There are lots of stories about pregnant people dealing with a fall of Roe versus Wade and changes in state laws But this story is about their doctors. I Started calling OBGYNs when the Supreme Court overturned Roe because I wanted to know what their jobs are like now and how they're changing And I started hearing about doctors who were thinking of leaving their states because of new laws that criminalize a whole range of common OBGYN care Idaho is one of those states that passed some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country No exceptions for the health of a pregnant person. No exceptions to save the life of a pregnant person Like here's how state senator Todd Leakey one of the sponsors of the bill that would soon become law talked about what should happen in the case of For instance a serious pregnancy complication If the decision was based solely on a question of some type of health then you're talking about taking a life of the unborn child So that weighs more heavily than simply health.
Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman Just a follow-up. So just I guess yes or no the health of the women's irrelevant.
Yes or no I would say it weighs less. Yes, then the life of the child Lots of people had concerns about the laws even the governor who is anti-abortion Send a letter to the state Senate saying that some parts of these bills would quote in short order be proven both unconstitutional and unwise He signed them into law anyway. Idaho's new laws are also some of the most punitive toward doctors They cover any pregnancy that has a quote fetal heartbeat though in the early stages It's not a heartbeat in a normal sense. It's electrical activity and some tissue that will eventually become the heart The sound you hear with an ultrasound machine.
It's created by the machine But that counts as far as the law is concerned If a doctor does anything to terminate a pregnancy with a fetal heartbeat They can be charged with a felony and imprisoned for up to five years Even if say they have a patient who is miscarrying leading uncontrollably and they're trying to save their life Also, there's this phrase in Idaho's new laws affirmative defense What this means is in theory the laws do allow for abortions in the case of rape incest or to save the life of a pregnant person But if a doctor does that they can be arrested and have to prove in court would say report from the police attesting to rape Or somehow proof that their patient would have died and a jury would have to agree Under Idaho's new laws, it's kind of like doctors were assumed guilty instead of assumed innocent until proven guilty It doesn't sound legal, but it is When the abortion ban went into effect after Roe was overturned Emilia's first thought was not we got to leave Sanway She was not at that stage the stage. She was at was let's fight if enough doctors speak out if people understand the reality They will understand the dangers of these laws and they'll want to change them Emilia was already on a committee tracking maternal to us the state hadn't had one of those she helped create one She was also heading up the state chapter of the American College of obstetrics and gynecologists a cog no one else raised their hand to do it But Emilia did so naturally when a lawsuit was filed against one of the new abortion laws in Idaho Emilia was part of a coalition trying to change these laws She knew that lawyers needed testimony from OBGYN's laying out specific emergency medical care They've been providing for years that now under the new laws was criminal So I think okay Well, I'm gonna reach out to as many OBGYN's as I can think of and have contact information to and just see if anybody would be willing You know to make a declaration and then I kind of realize I myself have provided care like this So Emilia who had started out trying to find other OBGYN's to write about their experiences to help change these new laws instead started writing about herself Her own medical practice She'd never thought of herself in the same category as providers of so-called elective abortions What happens in abortion clinics? She thought of that as a different thing even though she'd written the word abortion in her patient's medical charts for years The medical term for miscarriages before 20 weeks is spontaneous abortion about one in five pregnancies end this way So she treats patients for this all the time Anti-abortion rhetoric had so effectively separated abortion from health care that in a way they got separated and Emilia's had to Emilia signed her declaration and submitted it her written experiences and those of other OBGYN's it all made a difference in the strictness of the law A small but significant one the day before the trigger laws in Idaho were about to go into effect A federal judge agreed to allow emergency abortion procedures that go through actual emergency rooms for now Did that like a big win? Yeah, tremendous relief hopeful, you know that felt like okay, somebody is really seeing this with a clear I and a rational mind and it's like well Obviously this you know this doesn't make sense Every other part of the laws still went into effect the very next day and around that time the idea of leading popped into Emilia's mind for the very first time She popped it right back out.
Hold up like pause like let's just see let's just see let's just see You know the circumstances in Idaho are not set in stone things are still changing and moving and so let's see kind of where this goes Surely this is gonna be reigned in This is the same calculation some of the other doctors I've talked to were making wait and see But one of the things they're all waiting and seen about is who will be the first OBGYN put on trial and possibly put in prison for providing health care to one of their patients Emilia back at work had a whole bunch of new stuff to sort through in her mind with these laws The new laws defined abortion as the use of any means to intentionally terminate a clinically diagnosable pregnancy So ectopic pregnancies for example came up all the time in our clinic and ectopic pregnancy means a fertilized egg is sitting outside of the uterus And sometimes has with the law calls a fetal heartbeat It's not viable it can be fatal and the longer it sits there the more danger the patient is in What am I supposed to do with a patient like this? Do I need to you know per the total abortion ban? I need to wait until she's really sick. I can't act just to protect her health I should be waiting until I'm saving her life.
This is totally opposite of my medical training Her medical training was try to stop things before they become life running the solution used to be straightforward She'd remove ectopic pregnancies with a quick surgical procedure or inject a drug that would end the pregnancy One day Amelia had a patient like that their pregnancy test was positive But Amelia could not find a fertilized egg in the uterus and injection was clearly the best option So while the patient was in the exam room Amelia started calling administrators at her hospital asking can I do this? She later talked to some lawyers about what she could do in this kind of situation One answer that I got was that it's probably 90% safe legally What does that mean? So you're saying I have a one in ten chance of spending two years in jail with a felony It says that what you're telling me right now and what intent sounds pretty risky right? I got three kids.
I I mean what that's not reassuring to me. It's also not a definite answer It's like what you know like that And then I have you know another lawyer who I've been in contact with who says take care of the patient do what you've been trained to do Take care of the patient Amelia advised her patient to go to the ER the ER chaotic and personal and usually more expensive for the patient But that's the only work around she had to make sure the patient got the care they needed while protecting herself under these new laws Amelia started sending all of her ectopic pregnancies to the ER Here's another thing Amelia realized about the way the laws are set up Even though ER doctors in Idaho should theoretically be protected from criminal prosecutions a prosecutor could still decide to try and charge her husband Vince anyways and Under the law as it stands people can definitely sue doctors including ER doctors for damages So it was Donnie on Amelia that it was possible that she and Vince could both now be sued by multiple family members of a quote preborn child The father of the preborn child a grandparent of the preborn child a sibling of the preborn child or an aunt or uncle of the preborn child So when I read this does this mean that the father of a rapist that the sister of rapists that the brother of the rapist Can sue the physician it absolutely does Family members can each file individual separate lawsuits asking for a minimum of twenty thousand dollars And they have up to four years to file a lawsuit right back to the language of the law statutory damages in an amount not less than $20,000 So just take note instead of having here's the ceiling. This is the maximum. We start with a minimum payout So all of that was on Amelia's mind when another patient came into the clinic She had an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured and you put a camera into her patients abdomen And I'm like oh my gosh, there is way more blood than there was described on the ultrasound that this person had 60 minutes ago Like we have got to move quickly the bleeding could kill her and the way to stop the bleeding was to abort the pregnancy Which was never going to be viable anyway, you know You do surgery like that where it's an emergency and somebody's having ongoing active bleeding.
That's already High stress and that sort of high stress like I trained for that and know what to do with that I can handle that then you add in this other weird layer of like is Her brother gonna not understand that this was a not viable pregnancy and her life was at risk and like What about her mom? What about her partner? What about her sister? Like do these people understand how serious this condition is?
Or do they only understand that I removed a pregnancy that had a heartbeat? I don't know how am I supposed to know? She started looking at her patients' charts as evidence she might even go or she wrote down words like life threatening and high chance of mortality for some theoretical future lawsuit Another case a patient came in to see her for a biopsy of the Langen other uterus Amelia found herself worrying. Wait What if she's pregnant the person had mentioned they hadn't been using contraception and so then I'm thinking well wait a minute when was her last menstrual period like we're definitely doing your pregnancy test But like what's the plausibility that there could be a pregnancy that isn't detectable yet?
You know super super early stages and so in these early stages a P test is not definitive It can still come up as negative if I had a quarter for every single time that somebody said there's no way I'm pregnant And then you know has a positive pregnancy test then you know if you're rich if there was any chance of this patient was pregnant A biopsy could inadvertently terminate this patient's potential pregnancy So there's part of me that's like we should not do anything today She needs to use effective contraception for a month and then come back you know and then I can do this procedure once I'm really sure that she's not pregnant But that's also really impractical for this person who's driven hours to come see me and further She has a medical problem that needs attention. She's already waited to see me this visit has nothing to do with pregnancy Amelia didn't send her back she treated her This is what it means for Amelia to have these laws in her head all the time to have to think of every single person who enters her office as pregnant Or possibly pregnant to have that become her constant focus More and more she's finding that what she believes is good care The kind she's obliged to provide under medical malpractice laws is in direct conflict with what the new laws say and she knows These laws are in her patients minds too because they're asking her like it in trouble for this or that is this legal? Worrying about that on top of whatever actual medical problem they came to her for In other states They have already been numerous reports about doctors delaying care for pregnant patients or even turning them away because of new laws criminalizing OBGYN care Some patients have almost died and ended up in the ICU a million her husband for months were pinning their hopes on Idaho's Supreme Court Overturning the state's abortion laws. That was their big wait and see on the back of her mind There was this growing nagging feeling will we be able to keep living here if the court's decision doesn't go our way?
You know, I'm just like so agitated as I am describing all of this and you know like the intensity level is just so high for me and My friend says well, so when do you just like put this all down and just take a break? And I'm I'm thinking like what do you mean? Right? I'm like literally vibrating out of my body.
I mean that's also a problem that In ability to kind of escape this I don't know how to put it down You know just sort of this like walking around and like whether it work or home and just like these like deep sides just feeling Like there say I do it without even like, you know thinking about it She was having trouble sleeping a first for her You know laying awake at night and thinking about this or that and I think just like the tension that you're holding in your body or Having to think about taking a deep breath because you've been holding your breath all day Amelia and Vince have had some wild conversations in the last few months They have talked about the possibility that both of them could end up in jail or face multiple lawsuits with potentially massive civil penalties or lose their medical licenses Chances are probably small, but also it's impossible to be sure what happens if both of us are in jail for two years? Who is raising our kids? I mean, we know yeah, we have a plan for our kids like if that happened. What is your plan?
You know family She didn't want to say more about who exactly their kids 11 8 and 6 years old would go to it was the first time I'd seen her look physically uncomfortable answering a question She kind of pursed her lips and sugar had no she just couldn't go there a couple months ago A few things happened that moved the idea of leaving from the back of Amelia's mind to the front The first took place in a car parked outside the state capital in Boise She was with another OBGYN They've been talking to the people in the governor's office about expanding Medicaid coverage for people who just gave them birth So they were sitting in Amelia's rental car and her friend turned to her and she had told me at that point that she was kind of Deciding between different job options job options in another state. This was a huge blow to Amelia She'd been a key ally in the spite Then right after that conversation Amelia caught up with another friend a lawyer who'd also been fighting these laws Amelia remembers her saying I haven't told many people this yet, but you know I'm planning to leave like so in the same day in Boise these two people who I Respect and admire and trust told me this state is not a place for me anymore And I I'm planning my exit and then the state Supreme Court ruling She and her husband Vince had been waiting for it came down and Lee was at home and on her day off when it happens I happen to look at my email and there was this message from one of the lawyers that just said in the subject line like Supreme Court decision out not good will follow up later and It was you know, I just kind of was panicked of like what it was this mean, you know, and then I'm trying to do this Google search Nothing comes up and so then I'm like I gotta go I gotta pick up my kids I get my car and I drive this will pick up and then I'm waiting in line You know like the cars in park then I pull up my emails again to just try to see can I find anything about this and other people are You know linking to a summary in this and not and I'm sobbing right like I you know, just like You know the first Supreme Court night I'd hope leaves that all three abortion laws are constitutional The court carved out one small exception at topic pregnancies, but not miscarriages not deadly feel anomalies or anything else Emilia broke the news to Vince. She says the first question he asked her was, you know, is this is this it? Like is this the tipping point was his question to me?
Is this a place that we can continue to live and practice medicine and raise our family? What do you say? Yeah, I think I'm I'm not at the tipping point Yeah, and I asked back to him like are you is this like the nail in the coffin for you? like are you done and You know, we're not there yet, right?
Like we're not at the tipping point yet. Do you know what your tipping point is? No, I'm not I'm not sure I Obviously the Supreme Court decision is a is a big blow and I don't know exactly where that line is of what I can tolerate Vince's job in the ER still had some protection that federal court ruling still holds for now allowing emergency abortion procedures that go through actual emergency rooms, but everything felt precarious. Emilia and Vince now talk about leaving almost every day Sometimes leaving can be an active protest, but Emilia feels like it would be a retreat a giving in like I can say myself But I'd be leaving my patients behind She's worried that if she left her clinic could collapse She's one of only four obgions and one of the others is thinking about leaving to Emilia says if they did leave first she'd probably have to leave to if Emilia or one of her colleagues does leave Sam Point The options for finding a replacement are bleak the last time an obgion left her clinic It took them two years to find another one and that was before Rofell Idaho already has a severe shortage of doctors one of the worst in the country I was you know looking at social media and somebody was talking about a person who was completing their obgion residency And was looking to come to the Pacific Northwest and there was all this hey We've got an opening in Washington We've got an opening in Oregon with that opening in Montana and I'm like hey There's all sorts of openings in Idaho and I'm like laughing out loud because I'm like who is gonna be finishing their residency training And being like I definitely want to go to the state with the super strict abortion laws that criminalize healthcare I mean I just I would literally laughed out loud and that's awful right like I'm laughing about how ridiculous it is that somebody would choose to come and practice medicine here That's terrible like that should be very alarming to anyone But I didn't I was like you left so you don't cry like I don't even know you know I just yeah Did you post there's time that opening that I know where you did you know better I sure did and I was like I mean but then you have to deal with the laws here But I'm like legit if you're willing to deal with the last I will hook you up I know all the people who are looking like I got you but you're not gonna want to come here Are you kidding me?
I know that I mean if you do want to come here cool like like I'll help you if one is Never leave and ten is we got to go like where are you on a spectrum right now? I don't know how to answer that what makes it hard. I Don't want to leave here You know and just turning it into something more black and white like a number scale does Feels hard. I mean I don't want to leave but I don't know if I can stay Some doctors have decided to leave I talked to two OBGYN's one had just left Texas the other Tennessee Their jobs are different from amelias because they're high-rescobies And so they're seeing some of the most difficult cases They told me they were just like Amelia when new abortion laws went into effect in their states They also wanted to stay and they also didn't know what their tipping point was and wanted to keep treating their patients And each of them described the same kind of moment to me one day They found themselves in a terrible situation with a patient brought on by trying to comply with the new laws One of them had to send a patient to another state in an ambulance It was a five-hour ride the patient's blood pressure was rising and by the time she got to a hospital her kidneys were starting to fail The other doctor had to turn away a patient pregnant with twins One of the twins was going to die and the doctor needed to intervene to save the other's life But he couldn't because of the laws He doesn't know what happened to the patient, but he knew I need to leave Mickey meek she's one of the producers of our show coming up is there statute of limitations on telling a friend?
I thought you were way off base We'll find out together that's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues It's this American life. I'm Nancy updike sitting in for Ira Glass today's show when to leave or if We're at act two of two back to the leaving expert The whole idea for this show came from me reading a story by Masha Gessen a New Yorker story Masha is a staff writer there reports a lot on Russia among many other subjects Masha grew up in the Soviet Union then moved to the United States as a teenager and lives here now The New Yorker story was all about leaving about Russians leaving Russia Masha was just about to board a plane to Russia when Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago and almost immediately after landing Masha started hearing from people from friends about leaving I'm trying to think who the first person was I think it was actually Vera my closest friend And I think that the conversation was sort of you know We're thinking of leaving we're thinking of getting tickets to Georgia that has family in Georgia Do you think we should go now or in a couple of months when our 16-year-old gets her foreign travel passport? Was it still going to be viable to leave in a couple of months? Were they going to close the borders?
But it still felt almost abstract and then like a couple of days later She said we're leaving Wednesday and then while Masha was at Vera's place for their goodbye gathering another mutual friend of ours came by and he was sort of Saying why do you have to leave like what's what's the big deal? There's always time not an unreasonable question. Masha thought at the time That night overnight more leaving Masha went to the last independent television station in Russia TV rain and saw a whole scene unfolding staffers at the station had gotten word that the prosecutor's office was investigating TV rain for quote extremism Which meant any one of them could go to jail for years? staffers also heard that special forces were coming to search the studios other media outlets have been searched before and people had been Ruffed up so staff members who were at the station ran out of the building sort of huddled in a pub outside Trying to book tickets on their cell phones So there's like this sort of call-in response where people go to tickets, you know Wasn't it not?
I know they want to arching them up at this sort of but yeah, there's yeah There's an and a sense of a rush and just you know very adrenaline and very desperate and then the next day I went to visit other friends and and I walked in and I realized oh, this is their goodbye party My god, and and so the friend from the night before the one who had been asking, you know, what's the point was also there? And he said I'm leaving tomorrow and that was just you know, like I mean he looked like he was shell shocked Because I think that something had changed inside him that from one day to the next from one day to the next and he Wasn't even he couldn't process what had changed he knew it had changed and he knew he was leaving and he was shocked by what he was doing Within a week all of Marsha's friends had left Russia all of them And I don't want to say that they're running for their lives Which is another very important aspect of this whole immigration is because people are acutely aware that they That they're not running for their lives that there in fact other people who were running for their lives at that very same time In Ukraine because of the same war, right? But but that they're running to salvage their sense of selves and to be able to be in the world It's hard to gauge how many Russians have left the country in the last year tens of thousands hundreds of thousands It's a lot whatever it is people have left for all sorts of reasons one reason new laws There were a couple of different laws that they passed a Week after the full-scale invasion began one that made it punishable to call the war Another was that made it a crime to discredit the armed forces Right that's one of the that's one of the wide angle laws that you can do that without realizing that's what you're doing You know, if somebody really wants to that's exactly right So in a way it's a more insidious law than than you know because it's calling it more We're I mean, you know what you're supposed to do. You're not you know what you're not supposed to do But of course terror works much more effectively through laws that are They and that can't possibly be uniformly applied There's another reason I wanted to talk to Masha in particular about leaving Masha is a bit of a leaving expert like I said not just as a reporter, but in their own life Masha has moved countries three times each time with no idea if they would ever live there again The first time was when Masha was 14 years old and the whole family left the Soviet Union to come to America Then Masha moved back to Russia in the 90s.
They went in 1991 on a recording assignment The Soviet Union was in the final stages of unmaking itself and what was left was the most exciting place on earth to Masha It was Russia remaking itself Masha also felt something unexpected there They felt at home a profound experience after so long away Masha spent the next 22 years living there loved it never wanted to leave and then Masha did leave Russia and moved back here Seeing their friends leave now reminded Masha of just how hard that decision had been to know when to leave It was also about new laws even when they were considering the first law against so-called LGBT propaganda to minors It seems so absurd right this was back in 2012 and I was like I was supposed to testify This was still at a time when one one like someone like me might go and testify in the human rights council And then the person who was organizing the hearing said yeah, just you know, there's no way they're gonna pass it We're not gonna hold a hearing like so. Let's let's not draw more attention to it and then of course they passed it and the parliament started talking about removing children from families and I went to protest and got beaten up and You know, it's not like it was news right, but I've never actually been beaten up before so Like in broad daylight with the police looking on it's a profound experience even if you know that that sort of thing happens to other people even people you know and and and then they passed a lot banning adoption by People who are in same-sex relationships or have sit-and-ships of countries where same-sex marriage is legal and my oldest son is adopted So then it was just like, you know, we have to leave and that now describes You and your family so specifically exactly So we put my oldest son on a plane and then how old was he he was 14 14 is the same age Masha was when the family left the Soviet Union a whole cycle of leaving and leaving again Masha told me that in the mix of feelings they've had in the last year seeing and talking to friends who left Russia is a strange kind of relief in a way, you know, the world has become kind of mentally more It makes more sense, but we're to you to me and to us as a group that we're like on the same side of not only the mental border, but the physical border for years after Masha left while friends stayed Masha sometimes wondered worried Did I make the right call by leaving could I have stayed to there was an acting thought of like well Maybe it was possible to live there and so maybe I overreacted Maybe maybe I was hysterical about Putin. I mean, he's terrible, but how terrible is he and now a lot of that is just That's that's just like he's as terrible as anyone has ever been I was definitely not hysterical And no, it wasn't actually possible to have a life there and are people saying that to you? Like is anyone saying to you?
You know, I thought actually you were a little off the deep end like and now I see what you mean or something Yeah, yeah people have said that and and it's funny because I even heard it from people who didn't actually say to me You know you're crazy years ago, but now I said I thought you were a little Maybe over acting a little but I was wrong These conversations just seem so strange to me to have somebody say that and I don't know it seems so sad That's like, ah, yeah, I kind of wish you were right. I wish I had reacted exactly And I mean that was always my sort of go-to phrase like, you know, I'll be really happy if you put me wrong. Yeah Yeah But you know just if I'm being emotionally honest about it, um, yes, I don't wish I'd been I'd have reacted because they might have regret I'd have if I'd ever reacted would be unmanageable So it's not like I've you know, I've always shown you for for having told you so But there's it yeah, there's an odd sort of emotional piece What having things fall into place? I asked Masha if they ever think about leaving this country Masha had a few different answers to that my brain book marked this one I mean dissonance of you doesn't regret for setting down rules to live by and I think one of the rules was your useless in prison or dead But as long as you're not in prison or dead and you're not you're not facing a significant risk of going to prison or being dead make a difference Where you are?
And that's pretty like this country is so far from our losing the ability to make a difference Yeah, yeah, I guess I wonder if if you if you have an eye on laws changing here I mean, you know laws that would feel threatening to you personally I mean I think that when Once you've emigrated once in your life, it's always a possibility So yeah, it's you know, I'm not actively thinking about leaving the United States It's not it's not a crazy possibility for me. It could happen I mean personally, you know, it's it's complicated kids here and right semi grown so so then you become you know You start having other kinds of roots But for example, and this is not it's everyone likely scenario, you know it becomes impossible To get to hormone treatment in this country, you know that for me would be a question of my personal health and I'd probably actually have to leave When I first started making this show, I imagined it being about leaving all sorts of places But it's all about the same place home a place you love If you're lucky you have some choice in the matter and time to think about it But it's a choice to break your own heart You can bottle off the bleachers and forget my name These five-ass bastards from the shadow cross It's a boy's last dream and a man's first loss And it never did occur to me Till tonight, there's no one left to ask to find my own right I'll sleep until I'm straight enough to drive Then the sign if there's anything that can't be left behind Today's show was produced by Diane Wu and Chris Benderov The people who put together today's show include Jane Ackerman, Fia Benin, Zoe Chase, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Aviva de Cornfeld, Cassie Howley, Valerie Kipnis, Seth Lind, Alama Stafa, Stonelson, Katherine Raymondo, Nadia Raymond, Ryan Rummery, Melissa Ship, Elise Spiegel, Lily Sullivan, Christopher Sartala, Marisa Roberts and Textor, and Matt Tierney The managing editor is Sara Abhiramun, senior editor is David Kessenbaum, our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry Special thanks to Agnieshka Sushko, Kylie Cooper, Wendy Hite, Layla Zahadi Spong, Ali Reza, Chum Shearsas, Allison Block, Kate Connors, Rachel Kingry, Mary Ziegler, David Childs, and Cheryl Strade Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 750 episodes for absolutely free Again, thisamericanlife.org This American life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange Thanks and happy birthday, Ara, to our boss, Ara Glass You know, I once saw him get recognized for his voice And he does have mixed feelings sometimes about the questions people ask when they recognize him in public When somebody comes up to me and wants to ask a question about casual discharge, that's not awesome I'm Nancy Updike, join us next week for more stories of this American life